Dad bod to Grandpa bod

maverick4x4

I'm 195 days and 35lbs unto a transformation from Dad bod to Grandpa bod. It started in December when I hit a weight heavier than I've ever been before. I've been a gym rat for 35 years, and generally maintained between 215 and 225. Too many snacks pushed me to 232 and I decided it was time to get lean.

I had a trainer at the gym dial up my macros, and decided to use MyFitnessPal for the day-to-day tracking. I'd say the third critical key to the success so far would be the Premier Protein shakes which I buy at Costco. When I get the afternoon munchies, I can pound one of those and not only does it help me hit my protein, but I don't eat the crap that pushed me over. I've called it project shred, but in the meantime I became a Grandpa so I decided to have a little fun with it and what people call Dad bod.

For lack of a better way to define my goal, I'm trying to get as lean as underwear models. Doing some basic math, and knowing how my body has looked at different weights over the years, I set 205 as my initial target, something easy to track. Turns out I was way fatter than I thought, so as I got close to 205 and had not achieved my goal, I readjusted my target to 195.

I'm approaching 195 and I still have not achieved the look I'm after, so I may reach a little lower, or I may maintain and try and build muscle for a few months. I'll decide after I hit 195.

lissaflowerthesecond

Wow! you look great!!! very inspiring!

vvww88

Amazing work!!

LyndaBSS

Way to go, Gramps!

Psychopasta

Congratulations, keep at it!

BasedGawd412

You are killing it!

pierinifitness

64 year old grandpa here who has worked hard too, like you and who also lowered his target weight as his journey was in progress. You just need more time. Continue with your precision feeding and also follow progressive resistance principles in your weightlifting work.

Your bod will only get better.

Grandfatherhood is an honorable profession. Enjoy yours as I’m enjoying mine.

maverick4x4

pierinifitness wrote: »

64 year old grandpa here who has worked hard too, like you and who also lowered his target weight as his journey was in progress. You just need more time. Continue with your precision feeding and also follow progressive resistance principles in your weightlifting work.

Your bod will only get better.

Grandfatherhood is an honorable profession. Enjoy yours as I’m enjoying mine.

Thanks! I appreciate the encouraging words. The precision eating will continue.

Weights: These days it's more like "regressive resistance principles". Always pushing for more but sometimes having to do less while navigating various injuries. On my best days I'm at about 75-80% of what I could do in my 30s (I'm 51). On most days I'm a lot less...kind of like the Toby Keith song "I'm as good once as I ever was..."

Over the last 2 years I've added additional workouts to my usual 4day split with mostly positive results. I am presently dealing with achilles tendonopathy due to sled pulls and a sore shoulder due to a wipe out on a rental scooter LOL. Looking forward to those items healing up so I can hit it hard again.

maronesax1972

What are your macros you are targeting and what’s your BF%?

I stopped targeting a weight about 6 months ago. Now I target BF%. If you want to get shred, the BF is what’s hiding it.

I think 13% BF and progressive lifting combined will get you that shred look.

pierinifitness

Agree on the changing focus from BW to BF except a quality BF measure doesn’t generally take place as frequently as a weigh-n.

I’ seeing some appearance action in progress including a visible 4 pack slowly asserting itself at current 18 percent BF.

Patience and perseverance are our friends.

maverick4x4

maronesax1972 wrote: »

What are your macros you are targeting and what’s your BF%?

I stopped targeting a weight about 6 months ago. Now I target BF%. If you want to get shred, the BF is what’s hiding it.

I think 13% BF and progressive lifting combined will get you that shred look.

Probably single digit bf to achieve my goal. I use weight because it's an easily trackable target, and I know what my body has looked like and been like at different weights over the last 35 years of pumping iron.

I plan on doing one of those dexa scans or whatever the cool kids use as I get close, right now it's just whatever the mirror says. We also did caliper measurements in December, but I don't put a lot of stock in that other than to determine relative change.

I got to 12% when I was in my early thirties, measured with the underwater weighing. I want to be a little leaner than I was then. My body weight at the time was 212. I was a lot stronger with a lot more muscle mass.

Right now I'm on a 1600 calorie a day with protein based on target lean body weight, 200 grams. So a 25 25 50 (c,f,p). Progress has been fairly steady. I only do 10 minutes/day of cardio, so I can always turn that up if needed, and I can always adjust my calories down a little if I need to.

Progressive resistance lifting has been mentioned 3 times now... I jokingly refer to what I'm doing as "regressive resistance lifting", since the weights drop each year (or vary widely), but Progressive resistance lifting (in its many forms) is what I would consider that I am doing. 😁 Always trying to do more, but basically just slowing the descent.

maverick4x4

pierinifitness wrote: »

Agree on the changing focus from BW to BF except a quality BF measure doesn’t generally take place as frequently as a weigh-n.

I’ seeing some appearance action in progress including a visible 4 pack slowly asserting itself at current 18 percent BF.

Patience and perseverance are our friends.

Thanks! What do you consider a quality method to measure body fat percentage? I haven't really looked into this for about 20 years. We did the calipers back in December, and plan on doing an update as soon as the trainer and I can sync up.

pierinifitness

@maverick4x4, I'm having a DXA-Scan done quarterly and have used BodyMap360 - https://www.bodymap360.com/ and am very satisfied with the value of the service. Do a search to see if there's one in your area. I've had 3 done and the trending info along with the reports provided makes it the best $49 I've ever spent. Had the water dunking method done for my first one. It's OK but nothing like the BodyMap360 product.

I think single digit BF has a nice soundbite to it but I've made the "business decision" that's too ambitious for me. My focus is on upper-percentile cardiovascular conditioning and strength endurance rather than body appearance. What I've learned in my journey, long like yours, is that if I chase athleticism, the body appearance will ride shotgun and tag along for the ride. Blood pressure readings, VO2 Max, resting heart rate and the time it takes me to run a certain distance, complete 100 pull-ups, complete 100 bar dips, along with the time it takes to complete certain favorite tough-as-nails kettlebells complexes are the metrics I'm more interested in. Have had great results training with kettlebells, pull-ups and bar dips along with running. You know the saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So, I'm continuing with this fitness curriculum for the time being.

Enjoy your youth and grandparent time and keep marching forward in your fitness, health and wellness journey.

maverick4x4

Thanks, I'll look it up.

I really have no idea at what % I'll hit the "look" I'm after, nor how long I'll stay. I'm not really interested in competing or anything, I just want to see how far I can chase it without getting too crazy. I've never done this before, and had I only hit 229 instead of 232, I'd probably still be there and more focused on the weight training, as has been my way.

Your goals sound consistent with a Crossfit type "work capacity" approach. I try to work stuff like that in from time to time...but it's honestly pretty exhausting LOL. Awesome workouts though. If those are your abs in the pic, that's pretty respectable and honestly more than I'm after (my focus is more on the definition under my pecs. If it comes on the way, then so be it.)

I do love pull-ups, and I do dips whenever my shoulders allow. I like sprints, and once my achilles is feeling better, I may try running a little more, though I've never really liked it all that much.

maverick4x4

pierinifitness wrote: »

What I've learned in my journey, long like yours, is that if I chase athleticism, the body appearance will ride shotgun and tag along for the ride.

I agree that one's body tends to reflect one's lifestyle. Mine reflected weight training and M&M eating. I also agree with the prioritization of health/performance over looks. Most of my life I have subscribed to the theory that if you eat mostly clean, the exercise will take care of the snacks and then I wouldn't have to diet to lose fat, and it's been pretty true until the last couple years. Lots of physical activity and weight training has built a decent base of muscle for me, but adjustments for injuries and snacking covered it all with a nice protective layer.

Since I've always just "managed" my weight/bf and only worked out more, never really calorie counted and/or dieted to lose fat, I was pretty nervous when I started this process. Previous to the last couple years, as I started to get close to 225 (my upper limit) I would just eat less cold cereal before bed for a few weeks and that would take care of it for a while. Over the last year, that didn't seem to work as well. Even after I started eating better and using a protein shake again after my workouts (instead of just a breakfast drink. A coworker was training for a triathlon and so I ate a lot of the same things as him, but he was burning about 1000-2000 cal/day more than me, so I didn't see a lot of results from that. So I was nervous about the effectiveness of going "all in", even though I see successful transformations all the time at the gym, and I understand the numbers, I really wanted it to work. And thanks to MFP, proper guidance (and reminders of things I knew but didn't practice?), and the aforementioned Premier Protein shakes, success so far.

I'm glad for the progress...honestly a little surprised at the amount of fat I had to lose. Maybe a gentle tweak would have pushed me back to the low 220s...but a healthy reduction in bf wasn't going to happen on its own or by just doing more chins or dips. I had already tried that.

nowine4me

You don’t look ANYTHING like my Grandpa. Nice job.

pierinifitness

@maverick4x4, a crossing over the line in the sand moment for me was when I heard something Jeff Cavaliere said in one of his many and excellent YouTube videos, eating is not dieting but fueling our body. This is the mindset I always make myself come back to when preparing to eat and eating.

You may have already viewed this video where he says this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoGs-FrYg8s

Zero Fasting, maker of the IF app I use had this posted on their Twitter page and I identify with it:



Grandpa to grandpa, I'm privately cheering for you in your continuing fitness, health and wellness journey.

maverick4x4

Yeah, I have pretty much always avoided the term as a verb only as a noun, referring to what I eat. I like "fuel". I haven't seen that video before, but I have used fuel in the past to describe what I eat. In this case, maybe precision fuel because I actually am having to track and be careful about what I eat to hit specific goals.

I know a lot of people get really hung up on dieting and yo-yo dieting and stuff like that. And maybe some folks have a long history with it. My wife and her friend called the fact that I was beginning right before Christmas as a rookie mistake. For me that's just when this project needed to begin. And I still enjoyed plenty of Christmas treats. That's the nice thing about the macro approach.

I've been asked by people who know me well what my maintenance phase is going to look like. To be honest, I don't really know exactly, though I have played with the numbers and I have some ideas. I imagine for a while it'll be pretty tight and then as I see what happens, I'll loosen up, or depending on what my goals are I may continue to monitor very closely. My guess is that I'll be working on strengths a little bit more, if my joints cooperate.

But I think that's probably a ways off, I have some goals to hit first. Because 195 is a target, I have to hit that. The actual goal is a certain level of definition, and I need to decide if I want to take some time off from the calorie restriction and maintain or build for a little while, before taking a deeper dive, or just keep going now until I hit my definition goal.

maverick4x4

nowine4me wrote: »

You don’t look ANYTHING like my Grandpa. Nice job.

Thanks!

ZmayraXD

you look great👍🏻 thanks for the motivation:)

maverick4x4

Finally broke though 195 today. New target is 185, goal remains the same lean look typically found in the 8-10% range. The last few weeks have had a few "free days" while traveling and camping, and the weight drops have all happened after these high calorie days. Interesting.

Meeting with a trainer next week for follow up measurements.

SueSueDio

maverick4x4 wrote: »

I really have no idea at what % I'll hit the "look" I'm after, nor how long I'll stay. I'm not really interested in competing or anything, I just want to see how far I can chase it without getting too crazy. I've never done this before, and had I only hit 229 instead of 232, I'd probably still be there and more focused on the weight training, as has been my way.

Nice work so far!

I've seen this mentioned a few times on this site, you might find it interesting as you continue your quest for single-digit BF%:

https://www.precisionnutrition.com/cost-of-getting-lean-infographic

pierinifitness

Here’s another good article, hot off the “press” -

https://www.myoleanfitness.com/pareto-principle-for-fat-loss/

maverick4x4

Interesting graphic (it's popped up a few times plus other similar ones).

I think any time you have a food plan, and 25 carb, 25 fat, 50 protein is definitely a plan, there is going to be some potential interference with social situations that include food. But honestly, most of those situations have been fairly easy to navigate. Focus on the proteins, on the veggies, "budget" the daily calories, or just pound a protein shake up front and just graze/ ignore the food.

So far the progress has been more or less consistent. I go more strict at times and from time to time, I enjoy the (food) moment. Today was one of those food days, but also included a heavy workout plus a hike. It's been interesting to see the results from long consistent strict stretches and then periods of strictness with high calorie days sprinkled in.

There's more I could do that I haven't had to yet (more cardio, less calories, food timing, whatever else my consultant dreams up) so for now, I'll just keep tracking in MFP, following the macros, drinking the protein shakes and eating the chicken/steak salads with extra meat. 😁😁

If I stall out then I'll reevaluate...and modify either the goals or the methods. But it hasn't really been all that difficult to sustain so far, so no changes yet. I think I'm close... we'll see what the next few weeks bring.

pierinifitness

@maverick4x4, consistency is our middle-aged friend in our fitness, health and wellness journey. Thanks for sharing. Keep marching forward.

maverick4x4

Still at it.

It's been a fun summer, shoulder seems to be to be healing up. Finally able to actually grip the squat bar again, rather than balancing it with my fingertips. My heel also seems to be feeling better as well.

195 has been elusive. I had to tighten things up the last couple weeks.

Next push is to get under 190, I'm excited to see what that looks like. Also starting to think about what maintenance will look like with protein at 200 g/day. Guessing total calories will be around 2,300 cal/day.

maverick4x4

The last couple of weeks have been productive and Labor Day weekend was fun, actually hit my lowest weight since I was in my early 20s at 191.3 on Saturday. Then we ATE! LOL we spent some time at a family cabin and enjoyed a big sourdough pancake, sausage, bacon, egg, fruit breakfast and other snacks, instantly jumped to 196 then back to 194 this morning. I don't worry too much about water weight fluctuations after higher than normal carb days, but it's interesting to track. In fact, I'm planning on an instant gain of 3-5 lbs once I go into maintenance phase, since I'll mainly be eating more carbs (it's hard to imagine increasing my 200g/day protein).

Body comp goals are getting closer...just a little fat left under the pecs that needs to be gone before I'll be satisfied. Maybe it will happen between 185-190?

My heel is almost better, I've been jogging a little, but no sprints or sled pulls yet. Shoulder is still painful and squats with any more than warmup weight are hit and miss; it's very difficult to get the bar in the right spot on my traps to use any appreciable weight, so spending extra effort on the leg press. At least the shoulder will tolerate heavier deadlifts again and they are getting worked back in.

maverick4x4

Here is a collage from beach photos. Mid August vs last fall.

maverick4x4

I did an "Inbody" bf% test at Vasa... anyone buying it? I personally don't think my abs are popping enough to be in the single digits. (the jury is still out on whether or not I'm going to shave to find out)

pierinifitness

Thanks for continuing to share your journey. You're making good progress and look happy. Good for you. You do have some decent musculature but based on my experience with DXA-Scans, I don't judged that you're single digit in the BF percentage department. Like that old photo, think I partied with you in the good olden days.

Keep marching forward, you'll get there.

pierinifitness

Hey @maverick4x4, thought you might enjoy this one where the person had his body fat percentage tested using two methods on the same day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMCcHFIArOk